More Gummi Roadkill

Over yonder, Fr. Bryce Sibley makes a good point about the roadkill candy and those protesting it:

But what really gets me is that the activists aren’t complaining that any sort of food whatsoever is made in the shape of animals! C’mon what kid does not take pleasure in eating the heads then legs of his chocolate Easter Bunny? Or smiles as he performs a "head transplant" on his gummy bears? Or delights in ripping the limbs off of his animal crackers? How come this does not promote cruelty to animals?

So, I called the NJSCPA and brought up this point and suggested they start a campaign to stop the production of chocolate Easter Bunnies. The guy I spoke with did not think it was the same thing. I told him that I thought this type of thing encouraged much more cruelty to animals than road-kill candy. He said I was entitled to my opinion then said good-bye.

(Cowboy hat tip: Small But Disorganized.)

Indeed, it’s true. Kids love savagely biting the heads off chocolate Easter bunnies. I sure did, and I wasn’t alone. In fact, on MST3K the Mads once invited a chocolate bunny guillotine to facilitate the process.

I notice several comments made similar points in the comments box down yonder.

(No plagiarism of Fr. Sibley, a’course. JimmyAkin.Org readers are all to ethical for that. 😉

The Woman At The Well

A reader writes:

Yesterday, I attended my sister’s parish.  For the Gospel reading (Jacob’s Well), a "play" format was used with the priest saying the words of Jesus and parishoners reading other parts.  Is this in accord with the rubrics of the mass?
It wasn’t terribly distracting, but I’m not sure of the reason for it. I have seen this done at Good Friday, but not with this reading.
It’s not allowed.
There are only two days of the year on which such dialogue readings of the gospel are permitted: Palm Sunday and Good Friday.
I have seen the same thing happen, though, and I have a suspicion why it’s being done: Aside from general touchie-feelie, "Let’s shake up the liturgy"-ness, I think it’s because the text involves Jesus interacting with a woman, and it’s just too tempting for some liturgists to have the chance to get a woman reading the part of a woman character from the gospel, as this otherwise doesn’t occur. I think it’s done as some kind of advancement of women/Jesus’ compassion for women thing.
That’s just speculation, though. You’d have to ask the folks who did it in any given parish for the real story on their motives. In many cases, it may have simply been that they’d seen it done elsewhere and didn’t realize it wasn’t allowed.

FLASH! WaPo Covers Phony Science To Harm Abstinence Agenda!

The Washington Post is carrying a story about the Ugandan decline in AIDS (WARNING! Evil registration requirement!).

Excerpts:

Abstinence and sexual fidelity have played virtually no role in the much-heralded decline of AIDS rates in the most closely studied region of Uganda, two researchers told a gathering of AIDS scientists here.

The findings, not yet published, contradict earlier evidence that attributed Uganda’s success in AIDS prevention largely to campaigns promoting abstinence and faithfulness to sex partners. Much of the prevention work in the Bush administration’s $15 billion global AIDS plan is built around those two themes, and Uganda is frequently cited as evidence that the strategy works.

If the report here stands up to scrutiny — and, more important, is borne out by surveys elsewhere in Uganda — it will deflate one of the few supposed triumphs to come out of AIDS-battered Africa in the last decade [Cowboy hat tip to the reader who sent this].

Okay, so WaPo is willing to report on a dramatic claim regarding scientific results that haven’t been published in an academic journal and thus presumably haven’t been peer-reviewed yet. They aren’t willing to sign off on the results ("If the report here stands up to scrutiny") but they are willing to report them based on a speech given by to opportunistic individuals who can’t be troubled to run their "results" through the peer-review process before announcing them to the world.

I’m sorry, but this is not the way real science is done.

Neither is it the way real journalism is done.

WaPo has been in the business long enough to know that the story that gets out there first tends to dominate the discussion. By covering an unscientific report, WaPo is using its influence to get an anti-abstinence story out there seeking to undermine Uganda’s (and the Bush administration’s) abstinence-based approach to fighting AIDS.

The fact that WaPo admits that the report may not stand up to scrutiny shows that they know enough to know that they shouldn’t be reporting on this.

Suppose the report doesn’t stand up to scrutiny (as is likely). What then?

Well, how ’bout this:

  1. A myth becomes entrenched that abstinence-based programs don’t work.
  2. It becomes harder for the U.S. to fund such programs.
  3. Less funding is available for them.
  4. More people get HIV.
  5. More people die from AIDS.
  6. The Washington Post and reporter David Brown have blood on their hands.

That’s what they’re risking by reporting on the opportunistic spoutings of a couple of individuals who can’t be "bothered" to run their findings through the peer-review process before announcing them to the world.

By taking that risk, the Washington Post and reporter David Brown already share in bloodguilt.

Animal Emotions

HERE’S AN ARTICLE ARGUING THAT ANIMALS HAVE EMOTIONS AND A SENSE OF SELF.

What I want to know is: What planet have the authors and interviewees of the article been living on?

Is it a planet where they don’t have animals and so these folks are just discovering what animals are like?

It’s perfectly obvious that animals have emotions and a sense of self. Okay, maybe beetles and eyelash mites don’t, but anything with fur or feathers does. All it takes is thinking back to one’s own experience for a few moments to come up with all kinds of examples of animals displaying emotion:

  • As a boy I remember being on the family ranch and having to round up a bull that had gotten over the barbwire fence. Getting it back in the pasture was a game of mutual intimidation, with the bull trying to scare us off and us trying to scare the bull back where it needed to be–without making it so mad that it would charge.
  • In college, one of my old girlfriends had a baby duck that she kept in her dorm room and would take outside for a while every day. One day I helped her and the duckling exploded with joy as soon as it was outside and could see the grass and the sky. While my girlfriend and I sat on the grass, the duckling marched about quacking deliriously. It was clearly experiencing an emotion.
  • Later, after my wife passed on, my sister moved in with me for a while and brought her dog–a high-maintenance Siberian huskie/wolf blend that was so people-friendly that whenever anyone would come over to my house the dog would lose control of itself with joy and move frenetically from person to person trying to lick them in the face. If put outside to keep it from doing this, it would sit outside the back door and whine to be let in again so it could interact with people.
  • Once I was riding a horse through an obstacle course that the horse wasn’t wanting to get right (it was being lazy). When I finally got it through without making any mistakes, I hopped off the horse and gave it positive feedback by cheering it and slapping it on the withers (that’s the high part of a horse’s back, at the base of its neck). The horse was so pleased to have done the course successfully and to receive praise that it began nuzzling me so forcefully that it actually started to pick me up off the ground with its head.

All of these animals were experiencing emotion, sometimes very strongly so. They also had a sense of self. That’s presupposed by the kind of you-me standoff I was in with the bull, or the dog’s desire to relate to you by licking your face.

I’m sure that you can think of examples from your own experience. Every time a cat arches its back and hisses, or every time a dog can’t wait to play with you when you come home, it’s an animal experiencing an emotion. Every time animals get in fights over food or territory or mates, they display a sense of self.

Animals (at least the higher animals) simply have these things, and it’s perfectly obvious. We don’t need scientists to tell us that they do.

What’s really going on in the article, and in the "science" behind the article, is that animal rights folks are trying to soften up the public to their view by getting them to think of animals as more like us than they are.

Sure, they have emotions and a sense of self, but the absence of these has never been a condition for animal husbandry or eating them. The fact is, they may be similar to us in some ways, but they are vastly different in others. No animal will ever write a sonnet or compose a symphony or understand Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem or contemplate God.

Whatever marvellous attributes they may have (including a degree of intelligence), animals do not have reason. They are not moral subjects, and they do not have rights. It may be an abuse of human nature to be deliberately cruel to animals, because it is contrary to our nature to enjoy inflicting pain for its own sake, but it is not contrary to our nature to eat meat, raise livestock, or go hunting.

Thus the Catechism states:

2417 God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image. Hence it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing. They may be domesticated to help man in his work and leisure. Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is a morally acceptable practice, if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives.

2418 It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly. It is likewise unworthy to spend money on them that should as a priority go to the relief of human misery. One can love animals; one should not direct to them the affection due only to persons.

ANIMAL RIGHTS YAHOOS: Road-Kill Gummi Candy Harmful! HARMFUL!!!

Roadkill_gummiAnimal rights activists are outraged over Kraft Foods’ new line of gummi roadkill candies, like the gummi roadkill snake on the left.

Sigh.

. . . You fill in the story from here.

No, wait. . . .

Excerpts:

"It sends the wrong message to children, that it’s OK to harm animals. And that’s the wrong message, especially from a so-called wholesome corporation like Kraft," said [New Jersey SPCA] spokesman Matthew Stanton. "I mean, the eight year-old little boys that would be interersted in such gummis will be so psychologically twisted by them that they will steal their daddies’ cars and go out joyriding just to be able to squash animals flat!"

GET THE (ABSURD) STORY.

(Cowboy hat tip to the reader who sent it.)

Masonry Book Recommend

A reader writes:

Thanks for all you do, God is smiling on you! Since Relevant Radio has move C.A. spot to 2pm I rarely get a change to hear your wisdom any more. I caught a bit last week, a listener asked about free masonry and you refer him to a book by Fr. Whelan at Ignatius, I think! I went to the Ignatius web sight and can not find it. Did I remember the information incorrectly? I appreciate any response.

The book was CHRISTIANITY AND AMERICAN FREEMASONRY by William Whalen.

Given the sensationalistic nature of most books on Freemasonry, this is the only one out there that I can recommend at present.

FLASH! MSM Misunderstands Vatican!

HERE’S AN ARTICLE THE PROCLAIMS THAT JOHN PAUL II HAS NO LIVING WILL.

The basis for the claim?

He hasn’t showed one to his doctors.

This, along with the article’s repeated snarky comments about the pope "imposing his will" on the Church, demonstrates the MSM’s cluelessness about such matters.

The fact that the pope hasn’t shown a living will or other document saying what to do if he falls into a persistent coma proves exactly nothing.

If the pope has such a document, its existence wouldn’t be made known until such time as he fell into a coma or persistent vegetative state or similar condition. Given Vatican sensibilities, it wouldn’t be seemly for knowledge of such a document to be public prior to that, in part because of the destabilizing effect it might have or would be perceived by Vaticanistas to have. If it were known to exist and the pope got sick, people would demand its release. If it was not released, a mediastorm would errupt. If it were released, people would go to town arguing about its provisions and whether they had been fulfilled or not, and another mediastorm would errupt. The only way to keep things peaceful would mean not acknowledging the document’s existence until its use was called for.

The pope would thus likely deposit it with someone he could trust–either the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or–more likely–the Cardinal Camerlengo who will run stuff upon his death until a new pope is elected.

Upon the pope being persistently comatose or otherwise not in control of his faculties, the individual tasked with keeping the document would then produce it and begin implementation of its procedures.

Doctors would not be informed of it until that time.

Starting A Blog

Down yonder, a commenter writes:

Congrats, buddy [on your fixed blogiversary]! You have been an inspiration to me for a long time, and now I have been inspired to start my own blog concerning Christianity and the arts (esp. Catholicism and Visual arts).

Any advice?

Yes, three pieces:

  2. Get a real blog that has permalinks and automated archives, not one you design yourself. (Hear me, In Light Of The Law?)
  3. Be sure to blogroll me and link to me a lot. Thanks much!

Foot Washing

A reader writes:

Do the rubrics for Holy Thursday allow the priest the was the feet of 6 men and 6 women? Can you point out where I might find a definitive answer? I am told that Rome says, "no" but that the U.S. Bishops have given permission for this as a "cultural adaptation".

A STATEMENT ON THIS SUBJECT FROM THE USCCB’S WEB SITE CAN BE FOUND HERE.

There are two things to note about this statement:

First, it correctly states:

The rubric for Holy Thursday, under the title WASHING OF FEET, reads:

"Depending on pastoral circumstance, the washing of feet follows the homily. The men who have been chosen (viri selecti) are led by the ministers to chairs prepared at a suitable place. Then the priest (removing his chasuble if necessary) goes to each man. With the help of the ministers he pours water over each one’s feet and dries them."

The term viri selecti does indeed mean "chosen men"–that is, adult males who have been selected for participation in the rite. The term vir always designates an adult male in Latin. This rubric requires twelve males because they are representing the Twelve Apostles whose feet Jesus washed.

Second, the statement goes on to say:

[T]he element of humble service has accentuated the celebration of the foot washing rite in the United States over the last decade or more. In this regard, it has become customary in many places to invite both men and women to be participants in this rite in recognition of the service that should be given by all the faithful to the Church and to the world. Thus, in the United States, a variation in the rite developed in which not only charity is signified but also humble service.

Taken simply as a factural description, this is true. It has become customary in many places in the U.S. to invite women to participate in the rite, and for the reasons stated.

Unfortuantely, that doesn’t make it legally permitted to do so. The Code of Canon Law requires:

Can.  846 §1. In celebrating the sacraments the liturgical books approved by competent authority are to be observed faithfully; accordingly, no one is to add, omit, or alter anything in them on one’s own authority [SOURCE].

Since no legislative action has been taken allowing local variation in regard to this matter, it appears that the use of women and children in the rite of footwashing is at variance with Church law.

What the statement on the USCCB’s web site appears to do is treat the matter ambiguously such that it states the law in a way that is accurate while describing a practice prevalent in the U.S. witout noting that it is at variance with the law.